VICE.com have been up in Glasgow filming a documentary – ‘Rivals: Rangers & Celtic’ – on the complexities of the relationship between the two Old Firm clubs and what the future would hold for both sets of fans if Rangers’ financial woes force them down the pan in the near future.

Another turbulent year has seen the government forced into passing the ‘Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act’ to criminalise sectarian chanting at football matches and Rangers on the brink of being wound up, VICE set about looking at what would happen – other than Celtic’s big ‘jelly and ice cream’ party – to the self-confessed ’90-minute bigots’ if the rivalry and loathing were to disappear.

VICE’s five-part documentary sees impartial English film-maker Kev Kharas tries to get a handle on the political, religious and national identity clashes that have shaped the rivalry – speaking to fanzine editors on both sides of the divide, feared former hooligan firm leaders, anti-sectarian charity workers and Abdul Rafiq; a Rangers fan banned from entering any football stadium for the next five years for singing sectarian chants and, curiously, the only Muslim member of the English Defence League.

Here’s the first episode..

Of course, it’s open to criticisms as anything of this fractured nature tends to be, but the final four episodes of the ‘Rivals: Rangers & Celtic’ documentary will be premiered over at VICE.com shortly.

So the Scottish hate the English just like how the Irish hate the English. Both are Celtic (the culture not the club) nations. But yet the ethnic Scottish hate the immigrant Irish because of religion. Why do Rangers fans love the Queen and the British flag so much? Don’t Scottish people hate the monarchy and the flag?

Lowland Scottish were well known supporters of the Protestant William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution, while more Celtic-descent highland area Scots were loyal to James, a Catholic. From this point, what was initially a political struggle was often coupled with religious ties. During the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Protestant and Catholic disagreements were furthered by a dominant Anglican rule that put limits on Irish Catholic influence in Parliament. As a result, when Irish immigrants started looking for work in Glasgow following the Industrial Revolution and the later famines in mid-1800s, Protestant Scots began to focus on the differences, such as the Gaelic language, Catholic beliefs, and preconceived notion of Irish inferiority, just as many do when they fear the arrival of misunderstood populations. Many simply adopted the antithesis of Irish culture to spite their rivals – hence Scottish Unionists and Loyalists.